Rich Gossage made his second appearance for the Yankees last night, pitching four scoreless, hitless innings in relief of Dick Tidrow. The latter also pitched four hitless scoreless innings in a game the Yankees lost in the ninth inning when Ken Clay allowed three runs as Texas shut out the Yankees, 3-0. But Gossage, or rather, the players' reactions to Gossage, was the story.
Gossage's new teammates said that his stuff was "vicious." The man who hit three home runs his last three at bats in last year's World Series and is known to fear no mortal, not even George Steinbrenner, said that "He puts fear in hitters. Hitters just fear him physically."
Despite not allowing a hit, Gossage was not completely satisfied with his performance. He said that he had trouble controlling his breaking ball the first two innings, which forced him to rely on his fastball.
Lou Piniella was impressed that Gossage has added a slider and said that means that hitters can no longer sit on Gossage's fast ball, not that it did too many of them much good. Piniella likes the fact that Gossage is a little wild, which discourages hitters from digging in against him. Bucky Dent, who was Gossage's teammate with the White Sox, added that Gossage's ball moves with such velocity and moves so much it makes hitters wary of the inside pitch and makes them want to bail out. Sparky Lyle didn't say much.
COMMENTS:
Rich Gossage was one of the greatest relief pitchers in baseball history. He pitched in an era when relief pitchers were rightly called "firemen" because their job was to come into a game and stop a rally. In the exhibition game referred to above, Gossage pitched four innings. During the season, it was not unusual for Gossage, Rollie Fingers, Terry Forster, Sparky Lyle, and other relief pitchers to go three or four innings. They were not "closers."
Before the era of closers, managers didn't use their best relief pitcher to start an inning. There was no need to because no one was on base when an inning started. The measure of a relief pitcher was his effectiveness in getting out of jams others created. Few were as good as Gossage and none was better.
Mariano Rivera is considered the greatest of all relief pitchers, but it is invalid to compare today's closers to relievers of the past because closers almost always start the game's ninth inning with the bases empty. Occasionally, in critical games they may pitch two innings, and even less occasionally, they may actually come into the game with a runner on base.
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